Balkenende To Confess to Obama

Today, Premier Jan Peter Balkenende (CDA) [Christian-Democratic Appeal Party] will be welcomed to the White House by American president, Barack Obama, who recently returned from Ghana.

Balkenende will be accompanied by Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen (CDA) and Renee Jones-Bos, the Dutch ambassador to Washington. With this visit to the White House, his fourth, Balkenende is on a par with Ruud Lubbers (CDA).

Wonderful country

The first Dutch premier to receive this honor was Willem Drees (PvdA) [Labor Party]. When he boarded a “Superconnie” of the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines on January 11 1952, with America as his destination, he wasn’t even sure whether President Harry Truman would receive him.

In the end, Truman spoke 10 minutes with the social-democratic leader. Afterwards, the premier declared, without hesitation, that not one important international matter had been discussed. The two mainly discussed the state visit of Queen Juliana, later that year, and the carillon she wanted to give to the American people for their support during World War II.

That the premier had spoken with the president was front page news in Holland. At Schiphol, Drees was welcomed by his wife, his children and three ministers. “What does Drees think of America?” “A powerful and wonderful country.”

Ranking

To Drees and the seven premiers who entered the White House after him, those meetings were much more important than to the presidents. In chronometric terms, the duration of the talks is given an almost magical meaning. If a conversation is lengthy, Holland then rises a few seats up in the ranking of most important nations.

Sometimes, that delay has a rather prosaic reason. In 1983, Lubbers thought that his talk with Ronald Reagan had gone off rather stiffly. Therefore, upon leaving, he asked the former movie actor what he thought of present-day cinema. Reagan did not waste any time, made himself comfortable and started to expound upon the degeneration of contemporary cinema. Thus, the talk lasted much longer than anticipated.

The bray

Premier Joop Den Uyl (PvdA) encountered extraordinarily bad luck, during his visit in 1975. President Gerald Ford had organized a formal dinner for him. Henry Kissinger, who participated as minister of Foreign Affairs, wrote in his memoirs that Den Uyl had received clear instructions from The Hague not to provoke and not to lecture. “But he was not able to master that trick.” That night was lost, anyway, because the hosts continuously walked away from the table to deal with a crisis with an American freighter, caused by the Khmer Rouge.

Like George Bush, Obama will have trouble with the last name of his guest. He probably will say something like, “Zjen Peetur Balkende.” In Dutch, balken is the speech of a donkey and, thus, an insult. But coincidence has it that the donkey in America is the symbol of the Democrats, the party of the president. From Obama’s mouth, “Balkende” can, therefore, never be meant as an insult.